Carefully Cleaning Up the Garbage at Los Alamos

[kristopher]

Carefully Cleaning Up the Garbage at Los Alamos
Mark Holm for The New York Times

October 23, 2009

LOS ALAMOS, N.M. — No one knows for sure what is buried in the Manhattan Project-era dump here. At the very least, there is probably a truck down there that was contaminated in 1945 at the Trinity test site, where the world’s first nuclear explosion seared the sky and melted the desert sand 200 miles south of here during World War II. But now a team of workers is using $212 million in federal stimulus money to clean up the 65-year-old, six-acre dump, which was used by the scientists who built the world’s first atomic bomb. They are approaching the job like an archeological dig — only with even greater care, since some of the things they unearth are likely to be radioactive, while others may be explosive.

The dump has become part of the $6 billion stimulus program to clean up the toxic legacy of the arms race, which is one of the biggest sources of direct federal contracts in the $787 billion stimulus act. More than $1.9 billion is being spent at the Hanford site in Washington, the home of the nuclear reactor that made the plutonium for the atomic bomb that was dropped on Nagasaki. Another $1.6 billion is being spent cleaning up a Savannah River site, in South Carolina.

After the stimulus bill passed, some Republicans questioned the wisdom of devoting so much money to nuclear cleanups, noting that the Department of Energy’s environmental management program had been bedeviled by cost overruns in the past. Democrats countered that the labor-intensive projects would create many jobs while advancing the stimulus act’s goal of improving the environment.

They also noted that the money was only a down payment on what is still a staggering task: the Department of Energy is responsible for cleaning up 107 sites...

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/10/24/us/24alamos.html

I love Los Alamos, it is one of the most beautiful places I've ever had the pleasure of frequenting. The eastern approach is a magnificent view of desert mountain splendor while the southern road leads out through Ponderosa Pines, a huge caldera filled with herds of elk, and stands of gorgeous white aspen.

[Tikki]

1. Remember this...the Republicans don't believe or even care about the....

seriousness of the health issues that are legacy of the
nuclear industry...

The threat to health in these places is really, real.


The Tikkis "Children of the Radiant Glow